Microsoft’s Zune site went down this week, in a move eerily similar to Apple’s Apple Store takedown, and on the same day too. New features cropped up afterwards including the entire podcast catalogue made available on Zune.net, but there was just one problem: nobody noticed.
Tagged ‘Store’
Christoph Hartmann, global president of 2K Games, has criticised UK games retailers for slashing games prices too early and warns that they may be making the same mistakes as the music business. While Hartmann has praised the country’s retailers for creating a good buzz around key launches, he believes that games sellers are too quick to relegate month-old titles to the bargain bin instead of giving them a chance to prove themselves over time.
The demise of long-serving high street chain Woolworths was a shame, but we’re really not going to miss all those pick-n-mix sweets, the shelves full of one hit wonder chart singles and the many teen angst mags. What we’d definitely like to see is Woolies stores being turned into giant video game emporiums instead. And that might actually happen; US games retail giant GameStop is believed to have made a bid for roughly half of the 815 defunct stores.
Having witnessed the barnstorming success of Apple’s iPhone App Store, Microsoft boss Steve Ballmer says the Big M wants to build its own.
Got friends or relatives abroad? Apple’s just launched a new service so you can send them an iPhone, Mac or iPod for Christmas just as easily as if they lived in the UK.
Not content with serving up DVDs, games, DRM-free downloads and even the latest Eee PC, Play.com just launched its own ticket store too!
PSP users could soon be downloading games straight to their consoles, as Sony considers a native store for the handheld console.
There’s nothing like legislation opening up new business for you, and that’s exactly what Apple’s just been the beneficiary of. New EU rules force music rights collection agencies to offer online distribution rights on a pan-European basis.